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Researchers Suggest That Semiconductors Can be Grown Instead of Printed

By - Source: Lund University | B 13 comments

Researchers proposed a new method of manufacturing "the smallest structures in electronics".

Rather than printing then on a silicon wafer, researchers propose to grow them while freely floating in a gas, and a self assembly method on surfaces. The project used gold nanoparticles inserted in a tube that acts as an oven to "bake" nanowires.

The method was developed at Lund University in Sweden and claims that the growth of the structures  can be controlled using temperature, time and the size of the gold nanoparticles. "The basic idea was to let nanoparticles of gold serve as a substrate from which the semiconductors grow," said Lars Samuelson, who led the research. "This means that the accepted concepts really were turned upside down."

Samuelson said that his team has built a "prototype machine with a specially built oven", which demonstrates  that the baking process "is not only extremely quick, [but] also continuous." At this, time the research project is following up to develop a method to capture the nanowires and "make them self-assemble in an ordered manner on a specific surface," such as glass or steel.

Samuelson believes that growing nanowires could be mature enough for semiconductor mass market production within two to four years.

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Top Comments
  • 22 Hide
    SneakySnake , February 28, 2013 4:08 PM
    I want to become a semiconductor farmer. I can nurture my little babies to full growth before they're ready for the big wide world of processing.
  • 12 Hide
    457undead , February 28, 2013 4:28 PM
    Whatcha farmin?

    Semiconductors.
  • 11 Hide
    freggo , February 28, 2013 4:42 PM
    Will there be government subsidies for NOT farming a specific chip or circuit ?

Other Comments
    Display all 13 comments.
  • 22 Hide
    SneakySnake , February 28, 2013 4:08 PM
    I want to become a semiconductor farmer. I can nurture my little babies to full growth before they're ready for the big wide world of processing.
  • -7 Hide
    wannabepro , February 28, 2013 4:15 PM
    When can I get one?
    I call dibs on farming the Xeons and HD 9970s.
  • 12 Hide
    457undead , February 28, 2013 4:28 PM
    Whatcha farmin?

    Semiconductors.
  • 11 Hide
    freggo , February 28, 2013 4:42 PM
    Will there be government subsidies for NOT farming a specific chip or circuit ?

  • 3 Hide
    sylvez , February 28, 2013 5:03 PM
    So.. there's gonna be a new Farmville game?
  • 3 Hide
    Onus , February 28, 2013 6:01 PM
    Michael Crichton's "Prey" had an interesting take on this. Without spoiling (it's a good story), bacteria were used to poop out the desired semiconductors.
  • 5 Hide
    g-unit1111 , February 28, 2013 6:09 PM
    So when do the semi conductors become self aware? :D 
  • 0 Hide
    groundrat , February 28, 2013 7:13 PM
    This is a very interesting development. Eventually this may lead to 5nm architectures or smaller. It may make the manufacturing process less expensive as well... after the retooling.
  • 4 Hide
    southernshark , February 28, 2013 7:37 PM
    GroundratThis is a very interesting development. Eventually this may lead to 5nm architectures or smaller. It may make the manufacturing process less expensive as well... after the retooling.


    They can already do 5nm................ and smaller as well at least in prototype.

    What it should be able to do....... is allow much smaller companies to get into the game. Instead of needing a billion dollar facility to print wafers, a much smaller company could grow them.
  • 3 Hide
    southernshark , February 28, 2013 7:39 PM
    Of course one would still need a few million dollars to get set up, but compared with 1-2 billion....
  • 0 Hide
    DryCreamer , March 1, 2013 12:56 AM
    2 years? That's pretty quick...

    Dry
  • 0 Hide
    agnickolov , March 1, 2013 4:26 AM
    Mother nature's been doing it for billions of years. It's called RNA. And the latest product is us.
  • 0 Hide
    TeraMedia , March 1, 2013 5:06 PM
    I think agnickolov has the right idea. Segments of DNA are used to make proteins all the time. If we could harness a similar concept to grow / construct clusters of atoms onto substrates, we could grow CPUs with smaller scale and more predictable behavior than the current methods will ever allow. Unfortunately, it took nature quite a while to get the process down right, and also to figure out what order to put the building blocks in to get the desired result.